Emotional Misery to Emotional Mastery

Emotions are powerful forces in our lives. They are the drivers of the actions we take, and can either contribute to our own healing or suffering.

The better we are at regulating and processing our emotions, the more control we have over the decisions we make, and the more likely we are to achieve and attract the things we truly want into our lives. 

So why is it important to understand, regulate and process your emotions? Let’s explore through a yogic lens.  

The Body-Mind Connection

All of us have feelings, whether anger, joy, sadness or any other feeling natural to the human experience.

What’s unique to humans, though, is we often place the feeling and its accompanying experience in the scrapbooks of our memories. When feelings move from the present moment into the space of memory, emotion is born.

Instead of being able to live in the moment—letting the experience and the feelings move through us—we constantly (and usually unconsciously) reference the old scrapbook “images” from the past. The person who hurt us is gone, the experience is long over, but we’re still imprisoned by the emotion.

How do emotions rise? Simply put, the emotion is born from a stimuli from our external environment, out of which the mind creates a thought, which then generates a feeling in the body, and expressed itself as an emotion.

Suffering arises when we avoid or turn away from uncomfortable or painful emotions. Freedom comes when when we learn how to be present and fully feel our emotions without holding onto them or pushing them away. This is when we get to experience the full range of Being Human in all its glory.

Breathe In, Breathe Out 

Healing comes from our ability to allow the flow of energy to move through us un-obstructed, fully present to the sensations in our body and anchored in our heart.

Every time we stuff our feelings, rather than letting them flow, we create emotional residue. Every time we feel trapped and helpless in the face of trauma, or are unsupported in the expression of our feelings, emotional energy is trapped and cannot be discharged.

Once we have the necessary support to process what happened, we no longer need to distract ourselves with food, sex, drugs or even work in order to numb the pain we’ve never been able or willing to face. 

When we are caught in a heavy emotion, our nervous system goes into fight-flight-freeze. Our breathing gets shallow, heart beat rises, and blood is diverted to our limbs so that we can run away from a perceived threat in our environment. 

Our breath is our number 1 resource when it comes to bringing ourselves back into a state of equanimity, a state in which we can process our emotions and see them for what they are - sensations in our body, rising and falling. The easiest practice is to place one hand on our heart and one on our belly - taking 3 deep belly breaths. 

Liberation Through Movement 

Sometimes, breathing is not enough to bring ourselves back into homeostasis. This is when movement becomes our medicine. When we bend and stretch through yoga asana, we confront our emotions and revisit our scrapbook memories.

During yoga asana, the physical body, known as the anamaya kosha, and the energy body realign. In that moment of wholeness, we move forward by living in the present. If, instead, we hold onto the past, the different levels of our body (i.e. physical and energetic) can’t line up and we create disharmony, stress and, potentially, disease.

Ecstatic dance or intuitive movement is also a beautiful practice (and my favorite) to release blocked and stagnant energy. When we combine breath, sound and movement and allow ourselves to be moved to the rhythm of our own Heart, we express our truth, pain, grief and anger without the need for words. We allow the body to do the talking. 

Observing As Witness

While the feelings may be painful or uncomfortable, and the urge is to turn away, or try to “fix” (i.e. stop) the problem, witnessing ourselves is a chance for wholeness. I call being able to stay with ourselves and with whatever is arising in the moment as “Holding Space.” 

Holding space means we accept how we feel. It means we see the truth of our own pain and don’t abandon ourselves during it. 

This kind of presence weaves together the mind and the body, watching and experiencing simultaneously. The essence of this re-wiring is to be patient and compassionate with ourselves.

The more we can honor and allow those experiences and feelings, the more we hold space for and witness them, the easier it is for us to find happiness and freedom, and work with our emotions instead of having them work against us.